Simms
biographer John Caldwell Guilds notes that, in 1855, Simms would "enter a
four-year period marked not by the exuberance and the surging creative force of
the young Simms, but rather by an artistic imagination tempered and refined by
maturity and experience."[1]
The first major product of this new period was The Forayers, another in
Simms's series of revolutionary romances, published by Redfield in 1855. The Forayers is concerned with the
British army's retreat from its outpost at Ninety-Six, and explores the events
leading up the Battle of Eutaw Springs in 1781; ...